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Federal Constitution sets the limit for ‘racism’ in Malaysia

By Joe Fernandez

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak was being his usual disingenuous self when he told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in London on Oct 31 that the Federal Government over which he presides was “not racist at all”.

Najib was speaking to CNN on the sidelines of the World Islamic Economic Forum (WIEF) in the British capital. https://www.facebook.com/worldislamiceconomicforumfoundation/info

Najib also denied allegations of his Government being corrupt and indulging in electoral fraud.

Both are outright lies considering that the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) won a majority of the seats in Parliament with a minority of the votes (47 per cent) against that obtained by the Opposition.

The endemic level of corruption in the country stems largely from the desire among the ruling elite to accumulate capital and/or live it up by simply putting their hands in the national cookie jar under the guise of Bumiputeraism and bringing so-called development to the people. Government contracts go for anything from twice, thrice to ten times what it should actually cost the taxpayer. The World Bank euphemistically refers to such shady practices as mispricing.

The result has been the National Debt Burden reaching 55 per cent of the GDP and the nation continues to be saddled with a 4 per cent deficit Budget as in the past ten years.

Still, it will be Najib’s denial on Malaysia being racist that takes the cake.

Son of the soil status for Malays by the backdoor via political term

Under Article 153, the Federal Constitution in fact sets the limit for racism in Malaysia by providing for the Malay-speaking Muslim communities – generally Bugis, Javanese, Minang, Aceh, and other Muslims – in Malaya (Peninsular Malaysia), and the Orang Asal (original people) in Malaya, Sabah and Sarawak to have a special position by way of a reasonable proportion in four areas viz. intake into the civil service, intake into institutions of higher learning owned by the government; government scholarships; and opportunities from the government to do business. http://confinder.richmond.edu/admin/docs/malaysia.pdf

The first sign of deviation from this came when first Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman created the political term Bumiputera (son of the soil) to include the Malays, made up of squatter communities of illegal immigrants, in the same category as the Orang Asal. The term Bumiputera is not found in the Federal Constitution or any law. Article 160 defines, among others, who are the Malays.

It has been downhill all the way for the Orang Asal in Malaya, Sabah, Sarawak

Malaya – named after the Malay language -- was created by the colonial British on the southern half of the Kra Peninsula which was wrested from the Thai Kingdom to plant rubber and mine tin. The Malay language was created from a Cambodian dialect by Hindus and Buddhists from India to be the lingua franca of the islands of Southeast Asia.

Ironically, while it has been downhill all the way for the Orang Asal especially as most of them are non-Muslim, the ruling elite in Malaya has gone beyond Article 153 to make a clean sweep of every sector of life in Malaysia under the guise of Bumiputeraism. Every sector of the economy and life in Malaysia is hampered by quotas, permits, concessions, tenders, contracts and the like – the Licence Raj -- designed to be in favour of the Malays on paper and monopolized by the ruling elite.

There’s a caste system in place in Malaysia with shades of Apartheid, Fascism, Nazism, and Islamisation. The Najib Government roots for ketuanan Melayu (Malay supremacy and dominance). This is the Nazi master race theory at work.

The 1.4 million strong Federal civil service alone, the Judiciary, the armed forces and the police, all examples, are 90 per cent Malay although the community forms just over 50 per cent of the population. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/my.html

The issue of Crimea State Medical University has been flogged to death in Google

Every government-owned university in the country, there are more than 20 establishments now, has always been headed by a Malay vice-chancellor.

This ensures that the intake into the universities is largely Malay. The public examination marking system in Malaysia is a state secret meant to facilitate the entry of Malay students, however undeserving, into universities including in the critical disciplines. The result has been medicine, law, engineering, architecture and other critical disciplines going to the dogs in Malaysia.

Non-Malay students who flood any foreign university run the risk of having the qualifications obtained from such university being not recognised by the Federal Government. A case in point is the Crimea State Medical University in the Ukraine which had the recognition for its medical degree withdrawn after the Federal Government discovered that most of the Malaysian students there were of Indian origin. The issue has been flogged to death in Google. http://www.csmuedu.net/

The chiefs of the three armed forces – Army, Navy, Air Force – except for the first Navy Chief who was an Indian, has always been Malay. As far as anyone can remember, no Orang Asal has ever been made General although they are the rightful owners of Malaysia.

The Inspector-General of Police has always been Malay while most of the victims of extra-judicial killings by the force – openly admitted in recent weeks by Home Minister Zahid Hamidi, a Javanese, - have been Indian. Yet the police deny that they are into racial profiling.

The Governors of the non-sultanates – Sabah, Sarawak, Penang, and Malacca – have always been Malay.

Except for Penang, the other three non-sultanates have always had Malay Chief Ministers, except for brief periods in Sabah and Sarawak.

The Chief Ministers of the sultanates, all nine in Malaya, have always been Malay.

The list goes on and on.

In the economy, the Federal and state governments have created Government Linked Corporations (GLCs), besides the idea of State Economic Development Corporations borrowed from socialist India, to dominate wide areas. Invariably, these are headed by Malays and largely staffed by Malays.

Mad mullahs and ulamas have taken over the Judiciary in Malaysia

Along with racism in Malaysia, what’s particularly disturbing has been the growing Islamisation in the country including the Judiciary.

Articles 3(1), 3(4), 4, 11 and 12 in the Federal Constitution, read together, clearly state that Malaysia is a secular country.

The Government, instead, harps solely on Article 3(1) to claim that Malaysia is an Islamic country. This particular Article does not state that Islam is the official or national religion.

Islam is a state matter in the sultanates.

The issue of Islamisation reared its ugly head recently when the Court of Appeal ruled that the Herald, a Catholic weekly, cannot use the term Allah in reference to the Christian faith. Apparently, the Court feels that the Muslims have the copyright on the term. http://www.loyarburok.com/2013/10/14/kalimah-allah-court-appeal-judgment/

The bottomline is that Malaysia did not fare well at all at the recent Universal Period Review (UPR) on human rights conducted by the United Nations. http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/09/03/malaysia-2013-universal-periodic-review-submission

Still, all that did not deter Najib from spinning fairy tales to CNN in London.

Malaysia should purge the term Bumiputera from the body politic since it does a disservice to the Orang Asal.

It should also return to the spirit of Article 153 if it’s genuinely concerned about the Orang Asal, the poor Malays and the poor of all races.

It should also honour the Malaysia Agreement of 1963 under which Sabah and Sarawak were dragged by the departing British and the Malayan Government to federate with Malaya.